


A Local Sort of Curiosity

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [296]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, M/M, Merman!Bucky, Mermen, Pining, merman!Tony, so much pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-02 11:28:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20275180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: “You can’t have him.”Bucky’s silver tail lashed; the water roiled around them. “Why not?”





	A Local Sort of Curiosity

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Merpeople AU. Prompt from this [generator](https://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).

“You can’t have him.”

Bucky’s silver tail lashed; the water roiled around them. “Why not?”

“Because,” Tony said patiently--for they’d had some version of this conversation many (many) times before--“he’s a human, dry brain.”

“I know what he is,” Bucky said, petulant. “I have eyes.”

“But not a lot of sense, in my experience.”

His best friend’s face tipped towards the sky, towards that strange world above the waves crowned by a blue ocean of air and stars and light. “You don’t know, though. You haven’t seen him, the way that he looks at me, the way that he smiles when I speak.”

“He doesn’t understand a damned word that you say to him, that’s why. He’s humoring you, Buck; to him, you’re an oddity, a local sort of curiosity that he tells the other humans about when they go out for a smoke and a beer. And let’s face it, that’s what fascinates you about him: that he’s new.”

“And pretty.” The petulance was back again, complete with crossed arms. “He’s very, very pretty, Tony. A lot prettier than most of the two-legs wandering around up there.”

Tony sighed. “You know, I might find this a convincing argument if we didn’t go through this every year. As soon as the new ones start clumping around on the docks, you convince yourself that you’ve fallen in love.”

Bucky shook his head, his long, dark hair streaming everywhere. “Not love. I’ve never said that I loved one--I’m not an idiot.”

“Really? That feels debatable at the moment. There are coral fish right down there running like mad through the trench and you’ve got me gazing at clouds.”

“Nobody made you come up here with me."

Tony shrugged, kept his tone as light as he could. “I made me.”

_ Because_, he thought but did not say, _ because the way you talk about this one _ is _ different and I know how you are when you get an idea in your head and I love you too much, you impulsive, gorgeous triton to let you get so close to this miraculous two-legs alone. _

40 summers he’d spent in these waters, nearly 30 of those with Bucky, and never before had he seen his friend’s eyes bloom as they did when he spoke of this human, Steve. Steve who sat on the end of the dock alone in the evenings, when the two-legs gave up their work; Steve who moved a pencil about on paper and stared out at the great oceans of sea and of sky but set down his pencil when Bucky surfaced and smiled at him as he spoke what to him must have sounded like music. Or so Tony had once been told.

He had loved a human once, when he was younger than Bucky, when there had been no one in all the colony who he’d felt understood the way his mind worked, the sorts of thoughts he sometimes had: his envy of the human’s facility with metal and rock; the hours he spent in his cave trying to recreate some of what he’d glimpsed on the surface--ah, those wonderful machines! Many of tritons he’d grown up with had dubbed him mad.

But then the Mer had provided, as she always did, in time, and Bucky had come along. A pest at first, always questioning Tony, poking, and then as the waves rolled by, in time, a true friend.

That love had come after for Tony was not perhaps so surprising; no one had ever taken the time to get to know him, no one had ever seen him, as clearly as Bucky had. Still, though, it had come as a shock, the first time he had put a name to the feeling. He had awakened from a dream with the water about him boiling, the sea caught in his cave electric and hot, and only when he felt the tremble in his _ grotte d'eau, _the ache did he understand what it meant, what his mind had whispered to him as he slept: his body desired Bucky’s and his mind did, too, and neither cared if loving his best friend was a particularly wise notion at all.

Ten years he had dragged it about, his love, and never once had Bucky given him reason to think it would ever be returned, but oh, a few heady months of summer singing to a stranger and Bucky was ready to hand his heart away to someone who’d never take it--someone, Tony thought, starting peevishly up at the world beyond the waves, who couldn’t. He’d never know how.

“Look!” Bucky said, his tail dancing in delight. “Look there, Tony. That’s him!” 

“Where?”

“_There_, for Mer’s sake! Oh, old man, come here!”

Before Tony could squawk, Bucky had grabbed his arms and shot the last stretch towards the surface, and suddenly, they were there, bobbing in front of a startled looking man with his pale feet stretched towards the water.

“Oh!” the man said. His broad face broke into a lovely smile. “You decided to visit me today, eh?” His eyes turned to Tony; they were warm and delightfully blue. “And you brought a friend, too.”


End file.
